Stampedes in Your Stomach
by canadianreaders
Summary: A jily childhood best friends au. Cover image by anxiouspineapples on tumblr.


As his lips press harder against hers, eighteen-year-old Lily Evans can't help but think about how displeased six-year-old Lily Evans would be with this development.

They had not been best friends from the get go. At six years old, Lily was sure that James Potter was the worst thing to have ever happened to her. Ever since he had moved in next door he had been pulling pranks on her, tugging at her pig tails and putting mud in her shoes when she wasn't looking. But two could play at that game.

Soon there was a full on war happening on their joint lawn. Looking back on it now, neither of them can remember exactly who won. (James always thinks he did, but not because of the pranks, because he got the smiling girl with fire in her eyes and on her head and a voice that sounded like magic). (Lily believes she won because she got this boy who could make her laugh, the boy with storms in his hair and stardust on his cheeks).

By the end of that day of battle, they were best friends. It was as simple as that. There was only one rule: they were never to kiss. They had both seen their parents do it and it looked yucky, and besides Lily's parents had kissed and now they were mad at each other all the time, and her dad slept on the couch, and Lily didn't want her and James to ever be mad at each other.

From that day forward they were inseparable. Wherever you found Lily you found James and wherever you found James you found Lily. Sure, they had their fights, like the time he had punched Brendan Metzler when he tried to kiss Lily in the schoolyard and she got angry with him because _I can deal with stupid assholes on my own, Potter, thank you very much._ But these fights never lasted long. Within a week, they were always back to being LilyandJames.

They were each other's anchors. The only person in the other's life that they knew, with complete certainty, would always be there. No questions asked. They had become the only thing the other believed in. James believed in the lilt of her laugh, and the tone of her voice when she comforted him after Susan Coles broke up with him in ninth grade, and he felt like the world was crumbling to ash around him. She believed in the glint in his eyes when they would bike along the beach, in the curve of his mouth when he said her name, in his strong arms around her tiny frame the day her parents finally got divorced.

The problem started on Lily's 16th birthday. It was her first birthday since her parents had officially split, and James knew that she had been upset about it, despite all of his attempts to cheer her up. so he baked her favourite type of cake (chocolate with mango icing, (god that girl was weird)), and knocked on her door at 7am, singing Happy Birthday at the top of his lungs. She tried so hard to be angry with him because it was seven in the morning and _I need my beauty sleep, James,_ but she just couldn't. And so she smiled and laughed with him and they had cake for breakfast. They spent the day playing in the snow and watching old movies, dancing to shitty music and screaming the words as James spun her around and around, he, the centre of her axis, and she, the centre of his.

And at the end of the day when they lay on her couch with their legs tangled together, she leaned over and told him this was the best birthday she had ever had, and kissed him on the cheek.

James felt this flutter in his stomach and had the sinking realization that he was in love with this girl who deserved the moon and the stars and the whole solar system and galaxies beyond that, and he was just one man. He was in love with his best friend, and there was nothing he could do about it.

From then on, every time James saw her, he felt like there was a whole fucking cavalry of horses in his stomach, beating out the sound of one word: love.

Things got awkward. James knew he couldn't risk ruining their friendship, it was the only thing he had. Their friendship had only one rule, he couldn't break it. And so he tried to ignore the horses in his stomach. But that was harder than it looked.

(If only James had known that there had been a stampede in Lily's stomach as well ever since her lips brushed his cheek and she tasted the stardust she had always known was there; ever since she realized that that was the only thing she ever wanted to taste).

They tiptoed around each other, both longing for what was and what could have been, desperate to get out of this grey limbo they had found themselves in. They were still best friends, nothing could erase that, but there were more tentative smiles now, more embarrassed blushing and muttered sorries. They couldn't talk to each other, not really, not when they both had to restrain themselves from uttering those three little words.

It continued like this for two years. James had accepted this is how it would always be, but Lily had not been so quick to give in.

It was her eighteenth birthday, and they had spent the day together. They played outside and threw snowballs at each other, six-years-old once again. As the end of the day rolled around, Lily leaned over to James as he was about to leave, planting a kiss on his cheek.

He jumped at least a foot in the air.

That was it. She had had it.

"I don't understand what happened, James. Why are we so nervous around each other?"

"We're not-"

"Oh, yes we are, did you not just see how you jumped three feet in the air when I simply kissed your cheek? Did I do something to upset you?"

"I-I can't talk about this," James made for the door again, but Lily caught his arm.

"No, you don't just get to walk away, James Potter, you have to tell me what's wrong!" Her voice was vindictive, her eyes bright. She had never looked more beautiful.

"What's wrong is that I'm in love you!" His voice boomed round the empty house. His hand was shaking. She grasped it. "I love you so much, Lily and it hurts everyday to know you don't feel the same. But it doesn't matter. Nothing is as important to me as our friendship. I can't ruin it."

She laughs, short and high.

"You're such an idiot," she says, pulling him closer. "Of course I love you too."

And then she was kissing him. Her hands were in his hair, pulling him impossibly closer. His hands grasped her waist, and his mouth pressed harder against hers.

As she kisses the boy she loves - the boy she has always loved - in her front hall, Lily realizes, with complete certainty, that yes, six-year-old Lily Evans would be displeased with this development, but eighteen-year-old Lily Evans really doesn't care.


End file.
